Sprint have a vision of more than just 2G service

Sprint who have been running their service since 2007, outlined their vision for the future which stretches beyond their existing 2G voice and SMS service available today. They are keen to enable applications and innovative services but fully realise they can't do this all themselves. This leads me to believe they are considering a 3G CDMA femtocell although potentially a 4G WiMAX femtocell could be on the horizon too.

Third time lucky

Orange, who despite offering a dual mode WiFi service for consumers, have been actively testing femtocells for business users. They've tried UMA for enterprise before, but have found the limited range of handsets were a problem. They've also tried picocells but found them too expensive. Whilst they remain committed to UMA for domestic consumers, they are trialling  3G femtocells. In many cases, this would still require a 3G handset upgrade (many business phones are simpler 2G models). They would also require the solution to be low cost and very easy to install.

Some find 2G femtocells appropriate

Cable and Wireless have a low power indoor spectrum licence for the UK, which they use to provide services to large businesses such as Tesco. They find GSM works well to provide the basic voice and text services their customers want.

Standard configurations are used for the most common building formats, and remote workers can also have one at home. They've learnt many of the lessons from practical femtocell deployment the hard way, and now have a smooth installation process where customers are given new SIM cards and can roam onto the Orange network when outside. Their system doesn't support handin when entering the building, but otherwise meets requirements.

Vendors show their wares

There were several vendor presentations from leading players including ip.access, picoChip, Continuous Computing and Ubiquisys. New ideas included picoChip proposing two antennae for the femtocell which gives it better signal/noise ratio (something like 7dB gain) and so increases overall performance, and Ubiquisys describing their cluster solution for enterprises which they call Grid Femtocells.

By locating several smaller (8 to 16 channel) capacity femtocells close together, the coverage areas will overlap. Smart algorithms then determine which femtocell is used for each caller, allowing the full capacity to be shared out more evenly.

But a cautious note from others

A few operators are unable to launch femtocell services today for reasons outside their control. Chungwha in Taiwan have run successful trials, but their regulator has not yet authorised commercial service citing both competitive and technical concerns. Cosmote Bulgaria have found the poor QoS on domestic broadband simply can't support an effective service - DSL is currently at 11% penetration but growing very rapidly.

At the final panel session, one delegate noted that the femtocell industry shouldn't stretch their potential market too far. Whilst low cost domestic and enterprise femtocells can be distributed and managed more like managed IT devices, he thought that outdoor macrocells using femtocell technology would not be so competitive. These require a whole range of telco-grade management, configuration and maintence features which must be funded from a very much smaller product volumes.

More on Vodafone's Access Gateway

Sagem provide the femtocell hardware used for Vodafone's Access Gateway as part of Alcatel-Lucent's full system solution. Sagem had several models on show:

a) the BroadW@ve 3001 which will be used by Vodafone for their launch next week, based on picoChip's PC202 design. It can operate at up to 6Mbit/s downlink and 1 Mbit/s uplink, with four active sessions concurrently.

b) a smaller one (about half the size), based on picoChip's PC312 design. It should be in production before the end of 2009. It speeds along at up to 14Mbit/s downlink and 5 Mbit/s uplink but uses much less power to meet the recent published EU requirements (of less than 8W). This new unit also has software features including a "sleep" mode which saves power but still keep the clock circuits working so it can restart very quickly.

c) the BroadW@ve 4704: an integrated DSL modem and femtocell (not on display) is also available with a similar specification.

Although these do not yet fully comply with the latest 3GPP Release 8 standard, they do also include an application suite.

The femtocell software itself and the femtocell gateway are developed by Alcatel-Lucent themselves.

And Finally

Thanks to Avren Events who organised the conference very smoothly, and attracted over 300 delegates by the last day (25% up on last year) indicating the high levels of interest in this subject. Substantial progress has been made since this time last year, and many in the industry felt it was a "watershed" event, with the commercial launch announcement by Vodafone setting the agenda for the industry in the months ahead.

We'll be following up with further insights seen at the event in the coming weeks.

Comments (2)

Shlomo Gadot said:

	CEO Percello has demonstrated first 15 user femtocell and 14.4 Mbs against Aeroflex. The solution with Ubiquisys is the most mature production wise to the market ( BOM and integration)
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ThinkFemtocell said:

	Ubiquisys were showing this also Shlomo - thanks for adding this. Yes, this was demonstrated on your stand, and I also saw the new G3 model from Ubiquisys which incorporates a Percello chipset.
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